Ten News Road Trip Remix: Space Travels 🪐
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Ten News Road Trip Remix
🚙 We're hitting the road and tuning into our favorite space segments with the Ten News. 🪐 Did you ever hear the segment about the 9th planet from Jacob and Olivia Rozencwaig from the Curious Kid Podcast? 🧑🚀 Or, when Bethany spoke to Terry Virts, a former NASA astronaut, and commander of the International Space Station!? 🔭 And of course, we can’t stop talking about the James Webb telescope! 🎧 Tune in to today's road trip remix to learn about all things outer space.
Sources
James Webb Space Telescope lifts off on historic mission - BBC News
NASA $10-billion James Webb Space Telescope cost more, took longer than planned : NPR
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TRANSCRIPT:
Ryan Willard 0:05
Hey, Tracy, how long until we get to the Griffith Park Observatory?
Tracy Kaplan 0:08
About 30 minutes, Ryan, but with this LA traffic, more like an hour. By the way, you might want to lay off the juice boxes. We've got a ways to go.
Ryan Willard 0:18
You're not the boss of me.
Tracy Kaplan 0:20
Actually, I am your boss.
Ryan Willard 0:22
But it's summertime, and we're not working right now.
Tracy Kaplan 0:25
But we're driving around all summer and need things to listen to. Wait, I have an idea. Let's put out some road trip specials.
Ryan Willard 0:33
Can we start with something to get me in the stargazing mood?
Tracy Kaplan 0:36
Let me just get my phone connected here. That's it. Okay. I'll do a remix of some of my favorite space segments that we've done. Did you ever hear the segment about the ninth planet from Jacob and Olivia Rozencwaig from the Curious Kid Podcast?
Ryan Willard 0:49
Nope. But that sounds perfect. Pop it on, Kap. I'm Ryan Willard. That's Tracy Leeds Kaplan. And this is a Ten News Road Trip Remix.
Various Voices 0:59
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Jacob Rozencwaig 1:09
When I was a kid, there were nine planets. They included the eight planets we know of today, plus the planet furthest from the sun named Pluto. But something strange happened 15 years ago.
Ten'er 1:21
That's when scientists decided to demote Pluto to a dwarf planet, leaving us with only eight planets.
Jacob Rozencwaig 1:28
In order to be considered a planet three things need to be true. First, it has to orbit the sun. It takes one year for Earth to orbit the sun. planets that are closer to the sun, like mercury, for example, are able to orbit the Sun faster, Mercury is able to make its trip around the sun in only 88 days.
Ten'er 1:51
For planets further from the sun, it takes a while longer. In the case of Pluto, it takes 240 years to orbit the sun.
Jacob Rozencwaig 2:03
That's a long time. But Pluto still qualifies because it does orbit the sun. The second thing a planet would need to do is have enough mass to be almost perfectly round, like our beautiful planet Earth. Once again, Pluto qualifies because it is round.
Ten'er 2:20
The last thing a planet would have to do is be able to clear the neighborhood around its orbit.
Jacob Rozencwaig 2:27
That means that as planets move around, they are able to push other objects out of their way using gravity. Unfortunately for Pluto, it doesn't clear its orbit very well. And as a result, it's no longer considered a planet.
Ten'er 2:42
But that doesn't necessarily mean that we don't have nine planets, or maybe even more.
Jacob Rozencwaig 2:50
Many scientists are convinced that a ninth planet exists even though it hasn't been discovered yet.
Ten'er 2:56
Really, they believe that it's so far away that it would take the planet about 10,000 years to make a single trip around the sun.
Jacob Rozencwaig 3:05
And they also think that the ninth planet would be really big about five times the mass of Earth.
Ten'er 3:11
No way. Then w would scientists be convinced that there's ninth planet all the way out there? Even though they haven't found it yet?
Jacob Rozencwaig 3:21
That's a great question. One of the things that scientists point to when they suggest that a ninth planet must exist is that there are lots of objects far far away that have odd clustered orbits, which suggests that there must be something like a planet that is influencing those objects to move the way they do.
Ten'er 3:41
That's exactly how Neptune was discovered in the year 1846.
Jacob Rozencwaig 3:45
Neptune was discovered by observing the planet Uranus, which before 1846 was the furthest planet from the sun. When observing the path of Uranus around the sun, scientists saw strange irregularities in its path around the Sun, which could only be explained. If there was another planet acting on it. You're kidding. With some help from mathematicians who helped pinpoint where the mystery planet would likely be. Neptune was finally discovered.
Ten'er 4:14
Even though there is some debate on the existence of a ninth planet. Many scientists think that we are really close to discovering the first true planet to be discovered since Neptune was discovered 175 years ago.
Jacob Rozencwaig 4:30
If a ninth planet gets discovered soon, that news would truly be out of this world.
Tracy Kaplan 4:39
Aren't Jacob and Olivia awesome? What would you want a ninth planet to be named?
Ryan Willard 4:43
I gotta pee.
Tracy Kaplan 4:44
That's a terrible name.
Ryan Willard 4:45
No, yeah, you were right. Too many juice boxes. Pull over there. Gotta pee, I gotta pee, I gotta pee.
Tracy Kaplan 4:54
Ryan, you're gonna miss an interview where Bethany talks to Terry Virts, a former NASA astronaut, and commander of the International Space Station, I tried to warn you.
Bethany Van Delft 5:07
Thank you so much for joining us.
Terri Verts 5:09
Yeah, it's great to be with you guys.
Bethany Van Delft 5:10
Did you always know like your whole life that you wanted to be an astronaut?
Terri Verts 5:15
When I was in kindergarten, the first book I ever read was one of those cardboard books with like one line per page. And it was about Apollo. So it was about the Moon Program. And it was, it was the coolest book, I can still remember it, you know what it looked like? And I was hooked.
Bethany Van Delft 5:31
So it's like two questions. But what do you have to study? And what do you have to be really, really good at to become an astronaut?
Terri Verts 5:38
So there are different ways in NASA to be an astronaut. Now, there are also private companies taking tourists into space, maybe starting this year. So for that, you just need money, you just need to be able to pay for your ticket. But if you want to be a NASA astronaut, you know a real astronaut, you go and live for six months, and you're doing science and research, you have to have a technical college degree. So something in math or science, or engineering or medicine, something like that. And astronauts come from different backgrounds. I was a fighter pilot and test pilot, but there are doctors, engineers, or scientists, people who have different careers, most importantly, you need to have some type of what NASA calls operational experience. Because when you're in space, you're not like writing equations on a blackboard, you're actually doing things and so they want people who have done things, you know, with their hands, maybe risky things. And before they pick you to be an astronaut,
Bethany Van Delft 6:36
Yeah, I would guess that you have to be okay with being a little bit frightened and taking risks and feeling confident that you can get through it. What is the longest period of time you've been in space? In one stretch?
Terri Verts 6:52
My first spaceflight was two weeks. And then my last space flight was 200 days. So you know, over six months was my longest mission.
Bethany Van Delft 7:02
Wow. That's incredible. And what happens when you come back to Earth after spending six months in your body getting used to being in space? What happens to your body when you get back to Earth?
Terri Verts 7:14
That is a really good question, President Obama asked me that question. But we visited him at the White House after my first flight.
Bethany Van Delft 7:21
Yeah, we're just like, totally as smart as each other me and President Obama.
Terri Verts 7:26
I was. So I'm a sports guy. And I was I like to play basketball is playing basketball with my son. And like, I couldn't even get the basketball to the rim, I felt so heavy, it was just like, Oh, I was so heavy. And I was like, oh, and the ball wouldn't even get to the rim. And I forgot to tell him that story, because he's in the basketball too. And I'm still mad. So the next time I see him, I'm gonna say, Hey, I forgot to tell you this funny story. I couldn't even shoot a basketball up to the rim. So you feel heavy, and you feel dizzy, just really like the world was spinning. But my body recovered really quickly. For some reason I was it's like I was made to fly in space.
Bethany Van Delft 8:05
You are a Commander of the Space Station. What does that mean? What does it mean to be a commander of the space station?
Terri Verts 8:14
So, it basically means like, if there's an emergency or some something goes bad, I would have been the person in charge. It's kind of like being the captain of an airliner. You know, when I talked about leadership, most people are going to be followers a lot more than they're going to be leader. So the first thing you got to do is learn how to be a good follower. Before you can be a leader. And then when you're a leader, you have to understand who your audience is. So like if the people you're leading are young, they don't have any experience. They don't know what they're doing. You need to tell them what to do. But then when you have a team or that people know what they're doing, and they're experienced, then you need to let them run things and stay out of their hair. So your leadership needs to change based on the team that you're leading.
Bethany Van Delft 9:00
Absolutely. That's such good insight for leading anything, right. It's so great to have you with us. Now we have a few questions sent in by our Ten'ers.
Ten'er 9:18
Hello, my name is Selena. I'm six years old and from San Francisco. My question is, why do astronauts have to use special rockets instead of airplanes?
Terri Verts 9:32
That's a really good question. So when you go into space, you either go into orbit which is just flying around the Earth, or you go even faster and you leave Earth and you want to go to the Moon or Mars you have to go to what's called Escape Velocity. So to go into orbital velocity on earth or in we call it low Earth orbit just a few 100 miles from Earth. The speed is about 17,000 Some 500 miles per hour. So that's pretty fast. And so if you tried to fly at that speed, you will just melt eventually. So you need a special rocket to get you above there.
Ten'er 10:11
Hi, my name is Ryden, and I live in San Francisco, California. And my question for you guys is, how do astronauts entertain themselves?
Terri Verts 10:21
Well, so for me, I was mostly busy, like every minute for six months, I had a lot of work to do. But one of the things that I did like in the evenings after dinner I was a photography guy. They tell me I took the most ever pictures and space by like baseball, so I watched a lot of baseball or I listened to a show called Car Talk. It is the funniest radio show of all time,
Ten'er 10:45
Hi, I'm Alex, I have a question for the astronaut. What does it feel like when you take off.
Terri Verts 10:51
So the first thing you feel is that you hear the engines and they are loud, it's a war like nothing I've ever heard. And then when the rocket lifts off the launchpad, you're accelerating. So it's kind of like being in a car when you slip up when you slam on the gas, and you're just smashed back. Only the space shuttle and the Soyuz got up to three G's. So three times your body weight. So that's kind of like laying on the ground and having three of your best friends lay on top of you. Just smashing you down. It's hard to breathe, you have to push out your chest in order to let the oxygen in. And so you feel acceleration, you hear this amazing noise. And the shuttle has solid rocket motors. So it's like somebody grabbing you and just shaking you so you know the sound, the acceleration, the vibration is pretty amazing.
Ten'er 11:45
Hi, I'm Lulu. I'm nine years old. Have you been to the planet Mars?
Terri Verts 11:51
I have not in fact, no human ever has. But we have sent drones there which is pretty cool. These rovers and NASA just today the day we're recording this flew the first ever helicopter. So, its first-ever airplane on another planet, which is so cool. So the last time humans went to the moon was in 1972, so almost 50 years ago. So no one's been back. Hopefully, NASA is gonna send astronauts there in the next few years, but we'll see. And then nobody's ever been to Mars. So hopefully, someday the kids listening to this might be the first ones to go there.
Ten'er 12:27
Hi, I'm Rosie, and I'm seven years old. What is the coolest thing you've seen in space?
Terri Verts 12:34
Our planet? I saw so much. You know, the galaxy is so cool. But just seeing Earth and there's so many things about it. The problem with being an astronaut is your bucket list gets too long. So seeing the sunrise and sunset, the moon rise and moon sets, seeing the Bahamas and the snow of Russia and Canada and the mountains of the Alps and the Himalayas in the Rockies and the deserts are really cool Saudi Namibia. The Sahara deserts are massive, these beige pink things. Actually. in Algeria, it's kind of orange and black. It's really cool. So anyway, there are so many things I could talk for hours.
Ten'er 13:21
Hello, my name is Charlotte and I'm 10 years old. I wanted to ask you about going up to space is like during COVID?
Terri Verts 13:30
You know the funny thing about that I actually I wrote a short book last year about how being in space was similar to being stuck on Earth and COVID. Because when I was there, we had three cargo ships back to back to back blew up. And so the station was all of a sudden low on supplies. And when the second one blew up was Russian Progress. They delayed our replacement crew because they didn't want to launch the rocket until they knew what the problem was and was sure it was safe. So they didn't want to send us back to Earth until the replacement crew got there. So they basically said you're stuck in space until we can launch the replacement crew. So we were stuck in the space station. We didn't know how long it was going to last. We were low on supplies. And there was just a lot of similarities between being stuck in space and being stuck down here in COVID. So my advice was, have give yourself a schedule. Be sure you're getting physical exercise. Keep a good attitude. You know, this is not going to last forever.
Bethany Van Delft 14:31
Talia wants to know what's it like to be in space? Is it fun? Is it not fun? Can you touch the stars?
Terri Verts 14:37
Well, Talia, you can't touch if you can touch the stars once but then you would melt and die. So those things are pretty hot. So you don't want it you can do anything once but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do anything once. But in being in space is really cool. Floating is just awesome. You feel like Superman. Looking at our planet looking at the stars is awesome. But honestly, most of what you're doing is work. I mean, I, you know, being in space is 99% work and 1% seeing the universe. And so, but that's okay. It was worth it just to, I was willing to do the work just to get that view for sure. So being in space is 99% work and 1% fun. But when you get the fun, it's really, really fun.
Ten'er 15:23
I'm Soah and I'm 11 years old. And I want to ask you, what you eat for dessert in space, if you do at all.
Terri Verts 15:30
I'm a big dessert, guy. I was there with my crewmates Scott Kelly, and he and I both like chocolate, so they would send me up like I had a bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. And they had m&ms. They give you these bags of food and they're supposed to last like two weeks. And the dessert bag of food. It's like a backpack normally has brownies and chocolate pudding and, and blueberry cake. It has different types of desserts. But this one for some reason only had one chocolate at him. It was a little Debbie's brownie. And Scott and I were looking at each other. So we cut it in half. And there's a picture of us, we're both very sad astronauts because we only have this half of a brownie for two weeks. It was really funny.
Ten'er 16:14
Hi, my name is John Lee, I might use old. And I want to know what it looks like looking down at Earth from space?
Terri Verts 16:25
Well, it is amazing. And that like I was talking about earlier, there's just so many different things to see. So really, every time you look at Earth, it's a different thing. You know, mountains or oceans or snow or ice, or nighttime and nighttime. The thunderstorms are amazing. You see these lightning, especially over Africa, and South America and the South Pacific, these tropical places, there's always lots of thunderstorms, and they're amazing.
Bethany Van Delft 16:52
This is from a parent. Kelly, wants to know, how do you go to the bathroom?
Terri Verts 17:02
From a parent not from the kid? Yeah, like every human needs to go. So there? The answer is very carefully. Because you don't want to be the person to make a mess. And the other the real bottom line is it's airflow. So on Earth, you have gravity, gravity makes everything go in the right direction. In space, yeah, you need airflow. So they have these vacuums, they have a hose for number one. And then basically it can for number two. And so you go and the hose sucks everything away. And you wipe it up and you're done. Or when you go on the can you just close it up when you're done and, and then it stays there and they and then it comes back to Earth and burns up and one of these cargo ships. You know, every few months one comes back to Earth. And so if you ever see like a progress or an ISS cargo vehicle coming back to Earth, we call it deorbiting. And you see a big streak across the that looks like a shooting star, you'll know what that streak is made out of.
Bethany Van Delft 18:09
It is a poop streak.
Terri Verts 18:11
It's a shooting poop star, a shooting star, and the for number one for urine. We actually recycle that.
Bethany Van Delft 18:20
Wow. Thank you so so so much for doing this with us. It's so exciting to have you with us. And yeah, I guess there's so much to check out. Thank you again.
Terri Verts 18:31
Thanks for having me. This is really cool. Hope the kids enjoy it.
Ryan Willard 18:40
Alright, Terry Virts is so cool. Gotta get it back in time to hear that interview. Do you have anything about the James Webb telescope?
Tracy Kaplan 18:48
Actually, one of our OG Ten'ers, and my son has some facts about it. Check this out.
Owen Kaplan 18:58
I'm reporting in from space with five facts about the James Webb telescope and its really hard to breathe. Number one the telescope took 30 years to build and cost $10 billion Wow, that's a lot of moolah. Number two, James Webb is replacing the Hubble telescope that launched in 1990. It is 100, let me say that again,100 times more powerful than the Hubble. Number three, to get into the position the huge telescope had to fold up like origami to fit inside a rocket ship and was blasted into space. That'd be pretty weird of humans could do that. Just fold up whenever you want. Number four, the telescope is now unfolding and setting itself up for taking pictures of the universe. Each step is a really big deal and there are 344 of them until it is ready. That's more than I can count on my fingers. Number five, James Webb has really good eyesight. That telescope is capable of seeing infrared images much more than the Hubble Telescope. This means that we'll be able to see stars and planets hiding behind space dust that we couldn't see before. Hello there. That's like if someone with bad eyesight put on glasses, and I hope they're stylish.
Ryan Willard 20:44
Okay. Owen is so cool. Wait, didn't NASA just release new photos from the James Webb telescope?
Tracy Kaplan 20:51
Yeah, you can either Google it and see them or you can check out NASA's Twitter and Instagram accounts, at NASA web. The pictures are amazing. You can see ancient galaxies and fledging stars within cumulus clouds of interstellar dust. There's more details than we've ever seen. And it's glorious.
Ryan Willard 21:08
I definitely will check it out. Wait, that's the Griffith Park Observatory. We're here. I gotta pee again.
Tracy Kaplan 21:15
Remember to do an outro, Ryan.
Ryan Willard 21:17
But first, here's a quick note for the grownups. This has been a Ten News Road Trip Remix. Technically, we're off for the summer, but look out for our road trip remixes and re-airings of some of our favorite episodes all summer long. I'm Ryan Willard, and thanks for listening to the Ten News. We hope you're having a great summer and staying cool, kind, and informed.
